I finally saw Adam Lambert’s “controversial” performance at the American Music Awards. Other than the fact that it seemed more like the Emmy’s than an AMA typical type of performance, I don’t see the big deal.

I can’t wait until the day when all gay performers come out of the closet. For homophobes, it’ll be like the climax moment in your traditional alien invasion movie: “Oh my god, they’re on every single channel and throughout my entire record collection. I can’t even get away at the theater or Abercrombie & Fitch.”

For these people, just like John Mayer said about folks who were shocked to find out that Britney Spears lipsyncs her shows and want their money back, “Life will continue to be hard for you.”

I said I would blog about some of the interesting facts and insights that I am gathering while reading “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession” by Harvard Business School’s Rakesh Khurana. Think of this as Sharda Cliff Notes.

Here’s one of them. On page 30, Khurana traces the origins of modern management theory to the industrial production process, where the relationship of management and workers as an extension of the relationship between engineers and machines. He cites the influence of Frederick W. Taylor’s ideology of “scientific management.”

Taylor’s methods essentially served to cast managers as the brains of organizations and workers as the brawn, inviting all of the hierarchical implications suggested by that model.

Khurana also mentions recent scholarship by Princeton’s Martin Ruef in the Department of Sociology. Ruef traces management relations from the 19th and 20th century to stategies to subdue and control slaves in the Roman Republic and antebellum south. How much of these approaches to we retain in management strategies of today? Many people do feel like slaves at work.

before/after

Dominican baseball star Sammy Sosa’s skin seems to be turning white. His publicist can say whatever… metrosexual skin treatments, bad lighting, lemon astringent… But, coupled with the permed hair and green contact lenses, there’s a pretty complete story. He probably doesn’t like being Black.

Is this new? Heck no. Skin lightening and a million potions for becoming more Euro-lovely have existed for a long time. My grandma used them, I’ve seen them around the world, and I even used them when I was much younger and confused about how I matched what society told me was pretty.

It seems that every country where people are pigmented has an aesthetic caste system based on color. Latin cultures are certainly no different. That’s why I find the concept of the monolithic “Latino” to be so perplexing — as are the generic images of tanned people with straight hair that are universally meant to depict “Latin” in pop culture.

I’m not a Latina. I was just mistaken for one enough times on the streets of New York that I decided to finally learn Spanish. At least then I could give directions to the people asking me for help every day. I spent time throughout Latin America and noticed something interesting:  a heck of a lot of Black people. Then I noticed something else, few of them wanted to be identified as “Black” because that was bad, just about as bad as being identified as indigenous or “Indian.”

To this day, I find it rare to hear a genuine conversation about race and Latinos. If anything, hopefully the fact the Sammy Sosa is being accused of pulling a Michael Jackson might start a dialogue about the reality of skin color and the social invisibility of darker Latinos.

What pops to mind is one of my Latin college professors joking that if you watched typical Spanish-speaking television dramas, you would think that they were cast in Sweden.

I spoke at a panel for women entrepreneurs last weekend, where I asserted that community organizing might be an “it” skill of the new generation.

I know there have been a few disparaging public remarks made about “community organizing,” as though it were some sort of euphemism for misspent youth. I’ve worked with quite a few community organizers over the years. I won’t deny that some of them are living in their own stratosphere. However, many others are monumental in skills of doing much with little and are profoundly good at influencing people.

These days everyone from authors to politicians to non-profits to corporate brands are trying to motivate the masses to “follow” or “fan” them. Remember when technology was good to have and how rapidly it became essential to existence? Similarly, having a social presence and community was once a nice bonus but is becoming unavoidable for nearly all of us.

I’m not saying that everyone should go out and try to be a community organizer but we could benefit from looking at their skills, strategy and purpose. How is all this digital wrangling of supporters, friends, and contacts really all that different from good, old fashioned community organizing dressed up in the latest threads?

So, I guess that I would say that there’s hope for the legions of young people who were galvanized around Obama’s message of social progress in the last election, and propelled themselves into organizing (as reported by Elizabeth Mendez Berry in her cover story in the Nation this month). Some of them are struggling to find their place in this discouraging new job market.

Sure they still have more to learn, but I think now more than ever, they deserve credit for a legitimate skill. The many people out there scrambling to make rhyme or reason out of the great new frontier of digital campaigning will hopefully figure out that there is value in putting their experience to good use.

Visionary: somebody of unusually acute foresight and imagination

Tool: One who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used.

I graduated from an MBA program this year. It was an unconventional route for the likes of me: someone with a ten year track record of being a human rights proponent. MBA and human rights don’t normally break bread together. When business crosses paths with human rights advocates, it’s often at the wrong end of an angry press release. I went looking for a new bag of tricks for innovative thinking. I wanted to get outside of my box but are MBA programs poised to break new ground or are they just a different kind of box?

I’ve been reading “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession” by Harvard Business School’s Rakesh Khurana. I would seriously recommend this book for every MBA, especially those who fall into the “unconventional” bucket like myself.

Beach reading, it ain’t. It’s way more academic and dense than the typical MBA article/case but it’s brilliant and thorough. Presumably most MBAs will never bother to wade through it and many have zero curiosity about the social transformations and controversies that created the modern MBA curriculum. But that might just prove the author’s thesis: MBA programs have deviated from their original purpose of producing thoughtful intellectual leaders with broad business acumen, and instead have become vocational factories for corporate managers.

He has some good points. I’ll share as many as possible on future blog posts because, like I said, not everyone likes to read 500+ pages on this kind of thing. One of them relates to me as a liberal arts college graduate. We’re a bit against the grain in business school. We like controversies, critical thinking and chasing interesting experiences (even when we don’t get paid for it).

Turns out MBAs were originally conceived as liberal arts poster children. Instead of learning formulaic thought, they were supposed to ask probing questions and think different. Is this true for MBA programs today? If not, what does the change from “higher aims” to “hired hands” indicate about contemporary business leadership?

There are some wonderful music events coming up in Atlanta. Among them is a tribute to Fela Kuti this Saturday with the legendary Roy Ayers and DJ Rich Medina and DJ Kemit. Apparently, there is also a Broadway musical in the works about Fela Kuti. I love Afrobeat and Fela’s music. It’s quite remarkable how much resurgent popularity it is getting these days. I wonder where the current fascination stems from. Is it simply aesthetic? Political? Astrological? Because black presidents are popular days, and that was one of Fela’s monikers? Whatever it is, I’m glad to have this music as part of the contemporary soundtrack of life.

Greetings Sharda,

I am disappointed to learn that you were offended in one of our yoga classes on Sunday.  As a regular student I hope you know that our daily goal at *** is to create a safe and welcoming environment for all of our students. In fact this is the first time in 6 1/2 years that I have received feedback like this about a class.  Please know that X’s intent for the class was to honor exploration as a concept, not Columbus as a person or hero, and the fact that the use of Columbus to illustrate the concept of exploration might offend someone did not occur to her.  X often brings themes into her classes, and unfortunately your perception and her intention were incompatible.

I sincerely apologize to you and hope that you will continue to share your yoga practice with us in the future.

Namaste,

After I had a few days to simmer down and get constructive criticism from my friends (some who thought angry asanas and blog posts were passive aggressive), I wrote a letter to my yoga studio about the teacher with the Columbus affection.

I am a customer in this relationship and, at the end of the day, should be offering honest feedback. This is probably more useful than festering with resentment. I’m still glad that I didn’t say anything in the moment.  I was way too upset. Let me know what you think of how I handled the situation. Here tis…

I am a regular student at your studio but never took a class with X until this past Sunday. Please pass the message to her that Christopher Columbus is a sensitive topic for many people. He helped lead the violent conquest of indigenous people and enslaved Africans. Although new nations in the Americas were born from this process, Columbus’ legacy is difficult for those who are also mourning and remembering his brutality.

Ms. X should be more careful about the themes and analogies that she uses in class, so as not to alienate her students or make them uncomfortable. I was extremely disturbed that she chose to decide for us that we would honor Christopher Columbus with our practice. Imagine, for example, asking descendants of slaves to honor the slave traders who brought their ancestors to this continent.

She didn’t just use Columbus once but referenced him throughout class. Even though I tried my best to focus on my practice, it was weird, disturbing, unnecessary and ruined my experience.

Please ask her to be more mindful of her students and remember to be sensitive to the fact that her hero might inspire very different emotions in others. I would not ever choose to welcome Christopher Columbus into my yoga practice in this manner.

At one point, Ms. X congratulated me on pushing myself in class and honoring Christopher Columbus. I can’t tell you how angry this made me. She then asked why people don’t honor him more these days?

Please read below from Columbus’ log and ask yourself how appropriate it is to relentlessly laud this man in a yoga class:

“They brought us barrels of cotton thread and parrots and other little things which it would be tedious to list, and exchanged everything for whatever we offered them…I kept my eyes open and tried to find out if there was any gold, and I saw that some of them had a little piece hanging from a hole in their nose. I gathered from their signs that if one goes south, or around the south side of the island, there is a king with great jars full of it, enormous amounts. I tried to persuade them to go there, but I saw that the idea was not to their liking…They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Just because it’s a legal holiday, doesn’t mean that I have to celebrate it.

Today I took a yoga class with a teacher I’d never learned from before. She told us that the theme of our class would be “exploration,” in honor of Christopher Columbus. That was a weird moment for me, in the middle of a room where I seemed to be one of few… actually, I might have been the only “non-white” person.

I thought about leaving right then and there. I figured that I’d already been offended, was pretty sure that I would have a tough time concentrating on yoga, and the heated room was not going to help me cool down.

For years, I was self-taught in yoga. I was serious but avoided classes because I thought it might have too many awkward moments. I may be only quasi-Indian (half black American and raised with little or no Indian culture) but it’s still weird to be in a room full of white people chanting in Sanskrit… or having a Western yoga teacher know more than me.

I got over it, and started taking classes – for the most part, really enjoying them and improving my practice. I would have even enjoyed today’s class for the poses themselves, but not for the commentary on Christopher Columbus. The class was well beyond  awkward; it was infuriating to the point of rage. I was practicing enraged yoga, which was paradoxical but motivating. My poses were deeper than usual. I imagined each of them as a big middle finger to the teacher.

You see, Christopher Columbus, was an explorer widely credited with helping Europe find and conquer the Americas. How you feel about him has everything to do with whether you identify more with the aggressors or the people who resisted the invasion. Some look at him and give thanks for the victory and other’s… well, not so much.

In the path of his conquest, many indigenous and African people were killed. A good number of us in the United States count those massacred among our ancestors or we empathize with their plight. True, we are also descended from Europeans and have a new national identity as part of the U.S. But we’re still connected to the memory of the atrocities.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, a scholar and author of several books related to Columbus, including “1492: The Year the World Began,” said in the Associated Press recently, “Every hero is somebody else’s villain.” Part of me knows that my life is the legacy of Columbus. But that part is overwhelmed by sadness over the bloodshed caused by his “discovery” of the new world.

Even if my yoga teacher meant no harm–and it was just a coincidence that she happened to look right at me when she referred to Columbus being “open” to the “natives” — it still felt painful and humiliating to be in that situation. I was not getting any kind of bliss.

I imagined myself marching out in disgust, maybe slamming the door on my way out. But this was a yoga class. That would look extra crazy, as would cursing, spitting or any of the other things I felt like doing. Maybe this was just some sort of cosmic test for my ability to concentrate and continue with my practice.

After all, she wouldn’t bring up Christopher Columbus again would she? Yup, she did. Again and again. Among the most difficult moments, she said:

- to squat and reach our hands in an offering, like the native people to Columbus
- explore our poses like we were exploring the new land
- lift our knee up high like we were posing at Plymouth Rock
- do three versions of camel and the boat pose in honor of the Nina, the Pinta and Santa Maria
- when I did the full camel pose, “Good for you. Really pushing and honoring Christopher Columbus. People don’t celebrate him much these days. I wonder why…” (I eff you not)

Anyway, you get the picture. It went on and on… for the entire class. I would have been annoyed at seeing any analogy pimped this gratuitously but Columbus? The Indian killer, apologist for slavery, and ruthless opportunist? Really? In a yoga class? At the same studio with this quote in the women’s bathroom: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. – Jimi Hendrix”? Yoga class isn’t supposed to make one leave in serious need of a stiff drink.

Have you ever had an experience where you witnessed a real professional and then suddenly understood what people in that field are really supposed to be capable of? I had an experience similar to that last Friday night when I saw Buckshot at the A3C hip hop festival in East Atlanta.

Buckshot is seasoned, he’s real and he is master of ceremonies… an actual MC. He controlled the crowd, the stage, freestyled on full blast, and had a powerful rapport with the DJ, legendary Evil Dee. He was absolutely hypnotic and ferocious. I don’t know if I have ever seen anyone do it quite as well. It was like, bam, that’s it, an MC – not just a rapper – but an MC. Phenomenal. I think he might be the new gold standard for what I think of as skills on the microphone. Respect well earned.